A Bronx Fail by Jared Carrabis
Papelbon, Red Sox lose heart-breaker, fall back under .500


I don't even know where to start.

I could easily come out and say that the Red Sox "should have" won this game, but I won't do that. In fact, I'll never do that. That's what makes this game so great. When you step in between the lines, things can happen that may make you want to rip your hair out, but that's baseball.

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes it rains.

Now, I can sit here and say that the Red Sox very well "could have" won this game, sure. So many opportunities came the Red Sox' way to close this one out, but hasn't that been the story of this team all season and not just tonight?

However, if you can muster the energy after a crushing loss such as this one, then tip your cap to this team for coming back after trailing by five runs to a pitcher who had not allowed more than two runs in a start all season long. For that, we can take a positive out of this disaster.

The offense's efforts were commendable, but just about everything else was far from the word and its meaning.

A year ago today, the Red Sox were 22-16 and three games out of first place in the American League East. Today, the Red Sox are 19-20 and sitting quietly in fourth place. I don't need to remind you that this team is collectively making $168,109,833, as I'm sure you are all reminded by your buddies who are fans of rival teams.

Daisuke Matsuzaka, you have fooled us all again. A seven-inning, three-hit, one-run, nine-strikeout effort with -- get this -- no walks in your most recent outing against the Jays. Do you see why we're so disappointed when you give up five runs in the first inning and suck the life out of your teammates?

In Daisuke's defense, there was not one, not two, but three defensive miscues in the outfield by all three outfielders that did not go as errors, but should have been turned into outs, and all led to runs. Balls hit into play that should have been turned into outs, but were not, lead to more pitches being thrown. It's never a good thing.

Thank God for the invention of the knuckleball, as Tim Wakefield's 2.1 innings of scoreless baseball kept the Yankees at bay, while the Sox were busy hitting five home runs.

David Ortiz got the laser show going by launching his seventh homer of the season, which tied him for 99th on the all-time list. That makes 6 HR for Ortiz in the month of May, a month in which the lefty slugger is hitting .348, with 14 RBI.

In the fifth, it was JD Drew who clubbed a three-run blast into the corner to make it 6-5, Yankees. In the top of the sixth, Victor Martinez snapped an 0-for-19 dry spell with a solo homer to make it 7-6, Yankees. Finally, Kevin Youkilis tagged a two-run shot in the eighth to put the Red Sox ahead, 8-7. The lead grew larger, as Martinez hit an absolute bomb over the bullpen in right-center for his second home run of the night.

Now I have you all caught up to the point of the game where I nearly lost my sanity. Like scoring the book at Fenway when I'm at the game, I like to tweet about the game when I'm watching from home. To make my tweets more in depth, I have MLB GameDay open, while I watch.

With a two-run lead in the ninth, who else but Jonathan Papelbon takes the mound. Papelbon opens the ninth with six straight fastballs to Brett Gardner, with the sixth offering getting smoked for a leadoff double.

After dealing three more fastballs to Mark Teixeira to get the first out, Papelbon goes right back to the fastball to Alex Rodriguez, who murders one of his signature dramatic home runs out to left to tie the game at nine. Right then and there, I knew that the game was lost. Not because the Yankees had tied the game at home in the bottom of the ninth, but because when Papelbon gets fastball happy, the results never end well.

Papelbon battled Robinson Cano for six pitches before getting the second out, all on fastballs. The next batter, Francisco Cervelli and his bomb proof helmet, gets hit with a pitch -- a fastball.

So here comes Marcus Thames. If I know that Papelbon has thrown nothing but fastballs this inning, certainly Thames does as well. The first pitch out of Papelbon's hand was a 93 MPH fastball and Thames launched that thing into outer space. It's like playing MLB The Show and looking at your buddy next to you to see what pitch he's about to throw. When you know what's coming, and you're a major league hitter, or a video game nerd, it's not that hard to cream it.

Thus, I give you Papelbon's ninth inning of work: two-thirds of an inning, three hits, two home runs, four earned runs, a hit by pitch, a blown save, a loss and of 19 pitches, 19 of them were fastballs. It was his first blown save since July 30 of last season.

Now after the game, I read a status on Facebook that said something along the lines of "it happens to the best, even Mariano Rivera," which I agree with. Even the best closers get touched up sometimes, but Peter Abraham made a great point on Twitter after the game saying that throwing all fastballs is, "way too predictable for a team that sees [Papelbon] so often."

Rivera has the cutter, which we all know has movement that most times is untouchable. Rivera's cutter is a freak of nature. For Papelbon, a fastball is a fastball. If it's not moving, it's nothing that major league hitters haven't seen before. This isn't 2006 anymore where these guys haven't seen Papelbon. Pitching is all about deception, keeping batters guessing and keeping them off-balance, and if Papelbon wasn't fooling me, he certainly wasn't fooling the Yankees, and that is one of the reasons that the Red Sox have themselves a very tough loss to open this two-game series.

If you take a look at the schedule, it doesn't get any easier. They've got one more against the World Series champions, come home for two against the Central Division champion Twins, head to Philly to play the National League champion Phillies, then head down to the Trop to play the team with the best record in baseball and the American League champions of 2008, the Tampa Bay Rays.

If they're going to turn this thing around, the pitching needs to be better, the defense needs to be better and the offense needs to stay as hot as they've been. If they can't do that, then this has the makings of being a very long and disappointing season.

-Jared Carrabis

To order Jared's debut book, One Fan's Story: If This Hat Could Talk, click HERE!





Published on May 18, 2010

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